It's an interesting contrast.
As Frank Schaffer says,
The leaders of the new religious right were gleefully betting on American failure. If secular, democratic, diverse and pluralistic America survived, then wouldn’t that prove that we were wrong about God only wanting to bless “Christian America?” If, for instance, crime went down dramatically in New York City, for any other reason than a reformation and revival, wouldn’t that make the prophets of doom look silly? And if the economy was booming without anyone repenting, what did that mean?Exactly. That's from the religious perspective. I think I've mentioned Schaeffer's "falling away" before.
From the (purely?) political perspective, Sophia McClennen writes,
One of Colbert’s greatest gifts was his ability to expose logical fallacies and faulty reasoning. His second book, “America Again: Re-Becoming the Greatness We Never Weren’t,” epitomized one of the primary flaws in logic to conservative patriotism: How can the United States be the greatest nation ever and also be on the verge of total collapse? Or, as Limbaugh put it in his attack on me: “Meanwhile, we’re losing everything this country’s known for. The culture is rotting away, the culture is corrupting itself away, being perverted away, and all of that’s being celebrated.” Again and again, Colbert showed us that the right had created an almost devotional quality to their version of American exceptionalism, one that could not account for practical realities and one that could not handle any sort of questioning. If you asked about the treatment of Native Americans, then you hated freedom. If you thought that the U.S. should not practice unilateral foreign policy, you were weak. Any time anyone had a different view on these issues they were immediately attacked for “hating” their country. It’s worth pausing to reflect on the very idea of attacking someone for “hating” their country when you disagree politically. How did politics become overrun with hyperbolic emotion? When Colbert began his show, much conservative political discourse had devolved to highly emotional language. There is no question that a degree of affect and emotion is a part of politics regardless of party affiliation, but most scholars of democracy agree that democracy works best when its citizens use reason and judgment to form their decisions.None of that is exceptionally insightful, but it's a set of points that deserve to be framed and highlighted
